MMA Manager

As was asked recently on twitter, are we planning on update MMA Manager again? A very reasonable question since last year we updated it fairly regularly and this year there’s been a single update which was mostly a bug fix.

To quickly answer the question, yes we do intend to keep updating MMA Manager. We’ve still got a list of things we want to add to the game, and we’ve been listening to suggestions from the community for what you want.

To be honest with you we haven’t been working on MMA Manager lately. An opportunity came our way to work on an interesting project, with some great people, and some new tech. Like everyone else we’ve got rent & bills to pay so we took the opportunity and are developing a prototype which hopefully pays off.

What that all means is the next update for MMA Manager probably won’t be out until next month by the time we finish the prototype work, and the update goes through the submission process.

The latest version of MMA Manager went live over the weekend, finally adding female fighters. But we decided to wait until Monday to talk about it as we expected everyone’s attention would be focussed on three nights of fights. And wow, there were some great fights!

I’m writing this on Sunday after watching UFC 194 – being in the UK we watch most events the day after, we had plans to stay up all night and watch it live but real life got in the way.

Because of this delay it was when we were watching the Namajunas vs VanZant fight on Friday evening that I received the email from Apple saying the update had been approved, which seemed appropriate. I’ve been a fan of Rose since her stint on TUF, and it was great to see her win in such a dominant fashion. I think she deserves a shot at Jedrzejczyk (who I’m also a fan of), that could be a very good fight.

The TUF finale was, well I can’t even think of a way to describe it. It was like someone forgot to put batteries in Artem, and Ryan Hall a top level grappler but a man who didn’t even make it to the semi-finals wins it all. Thankfully we had the main event to wash away the nothingness of that fight with Frankie Edgar making sure Chad Mendes has to take the long road back to a title shot with a first round knockout.

And then the big one, UFC 194. I’m honestly still processing what I saw. Two title changing hands. Rockhold brings another belt back to AKA, would he have won if Weidman hadn’t gone for that silly kick? I don’t know, probably, there didn’t seem to be any aspect of Weidman’s game that was bothering him. This is one fight where I’d like to see a rematch.

And then there was the main event, the long awaited Aldo vs McGregor. I honestly had no idea who would win this one, I would convince myself one would win then change my mind a few minutes later. 13 seconds. I expected a war, not a one punch knockout. 13 seconds. I could be smug and say I put a bet on Conor winning in the first round, but I only did that cause there were nice odds and it was only £1. I didn’t actually expect it to happen, not against Aldo. Can we have McGregor vs Edgar next please?

But this blog post isn’t about any of that, it’s about the latest update which is out for both iOS and Android for both the premium and ad supported versions.

This is a big update, as mentioned at the start of this post version 1.4 adds female fighters to the game. Female fighters are something we’ve always wanted to have in MMA Manager but with only two of us working on it we made the decision to add them as an update rather than for release. Speaking of titles, I never imagined I’d be writing this update with someone other than Ronda Rousey as champ but Holly Holm destroyed her – it reminded me of Dillashaw vs Barao.

Anyway, we’ve added new women’s weight classes from atomweight to featherweight. So you do not have to restart your game to add female fighters to your fight team we’ve added the ability to change the weight classes you use. This option is found in the recruitment screen, here you can select which weight class to replace and which to replace it with. Fighters in the weight class you have chosen to replace will be released.

In addition to the female fighters this update also introduces fighter retirement. Before fighters would fight for as long as you were willing to pay them to, and they could be talked out of retirement with a bonus. Now fighters will reach a point where they no longer wish to fight and there’s nothing you can do about it except wish them luck in their new life.

Serious injuries now have a small chance of ending a fighter’s career. We’ve gone back and forth on this a few times over development but ultimately feel it’s the right decision to go with the slightly more realistic approach. Also, even when a serious injury doesn’t end a fighter’s career it can lead them to think about retirement earlier.

Like fighters coaches could remain with your gym as long as you were willing to pay their salaries. With this update coaches will leave your gym to retire or to work somewhere else.

As always we love to hear from you so hit us up on Twitter or drop us an email.

It’s getting to the end of 2015, the year we developed and released MMA Manager, and as such websites and publications are starting to put together best of lists. We’re very happy to see MMA Manager is on of iAfrica’s best paid mobile games of 2015 and it’s in some great company there. We’re proud and a bit surprised to see our game placed along side the others that made the list, including The Room 3 from fellow Guildford developers Fireproof Games.

App Trigger, which is part of Fansided, has put together a list of 4 Great MMA Mobile Games which includes MMA Manager, so check it out.

We’re planning to get one more update for MMA Manager out this year, it’s currently in review with Apple and we’ll tell you more about it closer to release.